Thanksgiving: The True Story
Using firsthand accounts, poetry and folk songs, magazines, newspapers, historic markers, and interviews, Colman paints a fascinating picture of this cherished holiday and its changing meanings throughout American history. Get ready to delve into the rich past of Thanksgiving in a historical tour de force that uncovers the true story.
Reader Responses:
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Thanksgiving; The True Story. As usual, your writing flows so smoothly through all of the facts. It feel as though you and I are sitting side-by-side, and you are telling me a story. Wonderful--and fascinating.
Patricia Bandre', Professor, Reading Education, University of Arkansas at Little Rock
Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! As a teacher, I see this book as being about Thanksgiving, but also about historical thinking.
This is a great contribution.
Myra Zarnowski, Professor, Elementary and Early Childhood Education, Queens College, the City University of New York
Your book is going to be required reading for my students and has all the makings of being a landmark text!
Janice V. Kristo, Professor of Reading and Language Arts, University of Maine
I loved Thanksgiving: The True Story. I am always nervous when anyone uses the word "true" in relation to history, but this is an excellent example of the kind of truth historical inquiry might inform--tentative based on available evidence, open to new information, inviting new information, going for complexity and ambiguity.
Linda Levstik, Professor Social Studies, University of Kentucky
Your work is incredible . . . . The whole time I was reading I was marveling over your research . . . . I plan to give a copy to our 7th grade history teacher. . . . She can devise some really good lessons using the book. I like the way you use original sources with this age group. I was never taught to do that until I got to college!
Dot Emer, middle school librarian, Saint Andrew's School, Boca Raton, Florida
Congratulations for another great achievement! I enjoyed reading it, and especially liked the way you make the actual doing of history so much a part of the story, describing how you did the research and what that entails.
Molly Hoben, co-founder Minnesota Women’s Press and BookWomen
I love history books that make history into something that can be questioned and explored. . . .A must have middle school nonfiction and a great choice for history classrooms.
propernoun.net
Drawing on historical research and the results of a written questionnaire, Colman first retraces the growth of Thanksgiving as a national holiday and then surveys the wide range of customs and mouthwatering comestibles associated with the celebration. Both tracks are illuminating.
Booklist
Colman blends factual evidence with the results from the surveys in each chapter leaving the reader to determine the truth.
Voya
Images from Thanksgiving: The True Story.
click images to view
Penny's books are rich with compelling visual images. She does her own picture
research and takes photographs for many of her books. Here are four images
from
Thanksgiving: The True Story (from left to right): She drove to Plymouth, Massachusetts
to photograph the statute to Massasoit that stands on Cole’s Hill, (p.76). Then she drove
to Newport,
New Hampshire, to photograph the historic marker to Sarah Josepha Buell Hale (p. 42). From
her archives, she included an engraving from Harper’s Weekly of scenes from the “great Thanksgiving Day
football match between Yale and Princeton, 1891,” (p. 99). The fourth image of the 1911 Thanksgiving Day postcard
with the symbols of Halloween (black cat and pumpkin) and “joyous”--a word associated with Christmas--
represents the early efforts to jump-start the Christmas holiday buying season.
Thanksgiving has 60 images, a chart, and a map.
Check out Penny's Q & A and Classroom Connections for Thankgiving: The True Story.
Read Thanksgiving pdf file
Click to read a excerpt from Thanksgiving: The True Story
Click here to learn fascinating facts about Thanksgiving.
This book is available from your local bookstore or online at:
• Barnes and Noble • Amazon.com •
